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Artist of the Week: Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve

Earlier this year, Northamptonshire lads Temples released their debut album Sun Structures, a solid collection of 60s psychadelic nostalgia and revivalism. The album benefited from spaced-out lyrics, structured verse-chorus songwriting and surely the catchiest riffs to ever come out of Kettering.
Nine months on, and Sun Structures has been re-imagined as Sun Restructured, and boy! is it different. Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve*, a psychadelia side project of mixmaster Erol Alkan and The Grid’s Richard Norris, have mucked about with the material, the taut song structure of it’s parent being replaced by sprawling soundscapes and knowing nods to the original tracks.
Squishing some tracks to less two minutes, stretching others to prog rock standards and cutting others out altogether (no ‘Mesmerise’?), the album’s beauty relies not on just rehashing Temples’ original material, but on exploring the themes within it, expanding on the groove (an unapologetically 60s term for you there.) We think it’s rather good, and you should too.
Temples play the Trinity Centre in Bristol on Saturday 29 November.
Conal Dougan
*Surely the best DJ name ever?!